Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Nokia announces Open Innovation Challenge 2015 winners

Nokia launched its third consecutive Open Innovation Challenge, offering the brightest innovators an opportunity to collaborate on game-changing ideas to shape the programmable world. Nokia received hundreds of submissions from all around the world and after intensive evaluation work, ideas were drilled down to 10.

These 10 winners from Canada, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland and the U.S. were announced at Nokia's celebration event, held at its headquarters in Finland on November 10.

The challenge, organized in partnership with Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), invited participants to submit innovative ideas, technologies, or business models for a chance to collaborate with Nokia around exciting and even disruptive ideas, and to leverage Nokia's global market reach and connectivity expertise. The participants were also reviewed by NGP, which is actively investing in promising IoT companies.

Nokia's vision is to expand the human possibilities of technology, to improve people's lives and help them thrive by enabling a programmable world where billions of people, things, sensors and devices are connected. As such, the company anticipates exciting use cases within various verticals, including health, security, automotive, public safety, industrial Internet and smart cities.

Hossein Moiin, Executive Vice President and CTO, Nokia Networks, said: "We are delighted to announce the winners of our third annual Open Innovation Challenge - all of whom are among the brightest innovators and experts in the IoT domain. We understand that Nokia and others cannot do it alone. We need to think outside the walls of our innovation machinery and reach into the IoT ecosystem for partnerships and co-creation. By incorporating innovations from all around us, we can build a programmable world that will benefit us all."

Bo Ilsoe, Partner, Nokia Growth Partners, said: "We are pleased to partner with Nokia in finding the best innovators and promoting entrepreneurs active in the IoT domain through this innovation challenge. IoT is at the core of the investment strategy of Nokia Growth Partners and, together with Nokia, we are looking for the next game-changing innovations and sources of new billion-dollar businesses."